You don't pay anything to the phone company. You give them a bad check, pocket the twenty million, fire the whole staff, and declare bankruptcy.
Exactly. It takes about a year to pull it off, start to finish. What we do is, we set you up in an office in Florida. Your name is never on a piece of paper-
No. I'm sorry.
That's no good?
No.
We're talking easy money.
I don't care.
You know how cement contracts work?
I'm not interested, I'm really not.
This is a big opportunity. This is not these little jobs with Rick, bunch of fucking Jap motorcycles.
I know, but I don't want it.
Why?
Because it kept her involved with Rick. Because she would rather sit and read in the Columbia library. Because she was a girl. Because she was twenty-two years old. Because none of this was exciting to her anymore.
You love him?
What's that got to do with anything?
You're too good for him, you know.
I don't know about that.
What is it about Rick, the way the women love him? What is it, the muscles?
He's got a sad face.
What?
He's got a sad face. There's something about it.
I don't understand women. I fucking don't. I been married forty-two years and I got three sisters and two daughters and I don't know the first goddamn thing about how women think. All right, how about a restaurant? Want to run a restaurant?
How's it work?
Well, the whole idea is to run a restaurant that looks like it's making money when it's not.
Usually it's the other way around.
Usually, yes. Usually you want to hide your profits. In this case, we want a restaurant that is a good, decent place that makes almost no money. We got a couple in Little Italy and one up on Fifty-sixth Street. We found out that Mexicans can sound like Italians. You teach them a few words- buon appetito, whatever-and the tourists can't tell. The restaurant has a private room where it throws a lot of big parties. We make sure it gets used legit from time to time. We take payment in cash only for this room, that's the policy. This income is reported, incidentally. Except that the room isn't used much. The payment for the room is cash that is coming in from another part of the business, like the numbers operation. We take this money and we pretend we threw a big party at the restaurant. Two hundred people, music, food, expensive wine, the whole thing cost sixty, seventy thousand. Except it didn't. It never happened. But the cash came into the restaurant. The only record of the party is like Thursday, 6:00 p.m., private party, Mastrangello. Some name, any name. They paid in cash and the cash was reported. Looks very good. Then that cash gets spent buying legitimate stuff.
Except you don't really buy it.
Right. You pretend you're buying fish and olive oil and booze and whatever else. That cost is written off. We're washing the money here. See, Christina, one of my biggest problems, believe it or not, is handling the cash. I got to know where it is, where it isn't. The stuff takes up space. You put it in a box, then that is a goddamn heavy box. I got boxes and boxes of cash that I have to move around, get rid of, make disappear. You can't just put it in your checking account. I'm not crazy about sending it to the Cayman Islands, or one of those places… I'm old-fashioned, I don't trust that… So, anyway, the restaurant buys the food from other operations we run. Those operations are legitimate businesses. They're just selling olive oil or whatever. You keep the cash inside the operation this way, but it gets cleaned. You lose a percentage to overhead here, but that's your cost of washing that money. When it comes out, it's untraceable to its original source. The one hundred dollars from the numbers becomes an order for a bunch of fish and booze for a party that never was. You run twenty parties a month, maybe ten are real, ten never happen. You can make half a million or more disappear. The waiters don't know what's going on, because they don't see the paperwork. They may wonder why the room is empty. Well, okay. But you never explain. You also vary your pattern. We also got a couple of yuppie restaurants. You can do it there, too. The waiters and waitresses in these places don't pick up on it, because you only hire kids who are spending most of their time drinking and fucking and won't remember anything in a year anyway. It's unbelievable the way they fuck each other in restaurants. They do it in the restrooms and the kitchen. I mean, one of my managers once saw a girl getting popped as she was lying down on a frozen side of beef. The guy that was doing it still had his chef hat on. These are mongrel kids. They don't remember what's going on. They're doing drugs. You hire them and fire them after a few months. The turnover in the restaurant business is incredible. How you going to know how much bread got eaten here, how much there? We know because we're running it, but some cop, he can't. He don't know how much fish got eaten some night two years ago by thirty people. He can guess, but he don't really know. It's detail work. What do you think? That would keep you in Manhattan, be a nice quiet-
I can't. I'm sorry.
And then, sitting there in his floral shirt, Tony Verducci had sipped his iced tea and looked at her with confusion. He wasn't used to such disrespect. She'd wished he would just forget about her. And maybe he had, maybe not. He'd certainly never contacted her after she'd been arrested, or while she was in prison.
A wooden nightstick rattled between the cell bars.
"Welles!"
"Yes?" she called into the gloom, breathing fearfully.
She heard the guard's keys, and when she lifted her head, two immense prison system matrons stood over her, one black, one white. Big women, with bull necks and thick legs.
"Get up," the black matron announced. "Taking a trip."
"Where?" Christina asked. "What did I do?"
"You supposed to know that."
"Where am I going?"
"Just get dressed." The matron watched the blanket fall away from Christina's leg.
"People keep moving me around, not telling me where I'm going."
"You're making a trip this morning, missy. Get up." The matron sunk a meaty hand beneath Christina's armpit.
"Get your clothes," ordered the other matron. The guard held the plastic bag Christina had packed in Bedford.
"Green?" Christina pointed at her uniform.
"No," said the matron. "Free world."
"Can I just-"